


Quintessence of Dust

by the_nokken



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Character Death, Discorporation (Good Omens), Grief/Mourning, Heartbreak, Hurt Crowley, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-26 01:00:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20035231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_nokken/pseuds/the_nokken
Summary: As the infernal fire burned away the last of Crowley's happiness, he knew two things; his angel was gone for good, and he would make heaven and hell pay.





	Quintessence of Dust

If he had been human the smoke would’ve stung his eyes and made his lungs feel like sandpaper, hot and grating. But he wasn’t human, wasn’t given the choice to _be _human. He was a demon through and through, _a fallen angel_, he reminded himself bitterly.

His eyes were in fact stinging, but that may have been mostly due to the fact that tears were beginning to fall down his face, burning hot in the flames. He had the book, the fucking book that the fucking angel had cared about so much, the one that was supposed to help in the fucking apocalypse. Crowley didn’t care about that anymore. Let Heaven and Hell have their war. What did it matter really? The Almighty wasn’t just. She was a coward for letting her lackeys fight her battles. A coward for not intervening. A coward for not doing a fucking thing except exist and watch the world burn itself to the ground.

What did the world matter when Aziraphale was dead. No, that wasn’t right. Dead meant discorporated, dead meant on another plane. Dead meant that in several months to a year he and the angel would be dining at the Ritz together. Aziraphale wasn’t dead, he wasn’t anything anymore. Dust on the wind, as Crowley had heard before.

Flames licked at his clothes, and it was by sheer force of will that he was able to keep them intact. The fire couldn’t burn him. Infernal fire was little more than a day by the seaside to a demon. But to the angel… it was a sentence. Judge, Jury, and Executioner.

Something inside him was breaking. Crumbling in on itself. For the first time he felt alone. He had no one in his corner. Aziraphale had been his everything, his best friend, the center of his world on Earth. Without him, what would become of Crowley?

He couldn’t go back to Hell and expect a picnic, Heaven had booted him out long ago. The Earth was about to cease existing in a matter of hours (if it even took that long). It was him, and a book of prophecies, and a burning bookshop that had held some of his happiest memories from the past century and more.

How was it possible to feel so full of that prickling cold shard of anger and so empty all at once? Crowley used to wonder why many humans were so shocked when it came to death, the death of a pet, a loved one. They all knew that sooner or later death came for everything, he shouldn’t have been so quick to judge. He wasn’t above it. He wasn’t above grief. Above tears.

He thought longingly of the holy water he wasted not so long ago. Maybe, maybe he would see this through. Deliver this book or whatever to Tadfield. And then find a church. There were loads of churches in England. Pots of them. It wouldn’t be hard.

Yes, Crowley thought, his eyes set with a sort of determined hardness. One last thing, for the angel. And then he could let himself go. A stiff drink (or a hundred), a quick car ride, and then, nothing. He wouldn’t let either side get away with this, they could kill him, what more did he have to lose? The fucking Bentley? What was the car compared to the infuriatingly sweet and tragically awkward angel? After all, what was the world to him without his angel, without Aziraphale? A world without the one person in 6,000 years you ever loved? It didn’t seem to be much of a world at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Please do be kind about any grammar or spelling errors, I did try my best but in all honesty I was crying quite a bit when I initially wrote this and could barely make myself read it again to edit. In the words of my girlfriend "what the fuck babe." I had this image in my head that I needed to write out, I kept thinking that maybe Crowley was so upset because he assumed the fire that occured after Aziraphale's discorporation was infernal fire and that the Angel was gone forever. And so I had to write a scenario where that exact thing happens. They always say kill your darlings, right?


End file.
